Sanctuary, Or Seven times Nymphadora Tonks encounters a Weasley
by Graziana
Summary: "Never be afraid to play the long game, boys" she warns. [Soulmate AU] Companion piece to Orange-Violet Blooms


1.

Tonks meets Bill Weasley - and Arthur and Molly for that matter, but not really - when she is only 8 months old, though it might be more accurate to say that Bill meets Tonks.

Three years old the curious Weasley toddler approaches the infant that Andromeda dawdled on her lap cautiously. Both mothers were enraptured in their own conversation held literally and figuratively over the heads of the children.

Nymphadora's eyes focus on Bill as he approaches, both of them equally as wary as the other in this unknown encounter.

Curiosity was replaced with shock and sheer joy as Tonks gurgled and grabbed her hands out to reach for Bill slightly. The Weasley reached out to take her tiny fist in return and then her hair turned a bright shade of orange to mirror his own. Bill stumbled backwards and landed on his bum on the soft carpet in surprise.

The soft sound of the two mother's laughter was broken with the loud high giggles that Tonks lets out.

2.

Tonks meets Charlie on the Hogwarts Express for her first year.

Her mother had sent her off with a packed lunch and stern instructions to look out for Charlie. His family were good people she had said around a tearful goodbye as she sent her only child off to school for the year.

Tonks - for she was going by Tonks and not Nymphadora at this point - kept a keen eye out for Charlie, but as it occurred he managed to find her first.

"Urm hi" he offers. And she grins and tells him in no uncertain terms that he had stolen her opening line.

"I'm told we are going to be great friends" she tries. She thinks it might be a question, but it comes out more of a statement.

"Well," he answers pulling open the door to a compartment so they can pile in and get comfortable "Best get started on that."

They sit opposite each other for the nine-hour journey, trading stories of their home life.

Tonks notices that Charlie has some soot on the side of his nose but decides not to tell him. When they arrive at Hogwarts, robed and ready, Charlie notices the dirt in the reflection that the darkness behind the glass casts.

"Oi! You could'a told me!" he exclaims and Tonks cackles. He rubs at the soot but it doesn't budge. "Oh Great, now I've got to be sorted looking like I rolled around in floo powder."

"Oh here," she says stepping forward slightly, he leans back a bit with some wary anticipation in his expression that he expects her to spit on a hanky and rub the dirt away. Tonks smirks thinking that that was probably not an uncommon occurrence around Molly Weasley. She concentrates on that patch of dirt on his nose for a long time, ignoring his confused expression or the sounds of hundreds of students marching past their compartment to get off the train. She feels the tickle and smiles, Charlie looks shocked.

"You?" he asks, and even she doesn't know what the rest of his question his.

"I'm a metamorphagus," she says. She rubs at the side of her own nose, now sporting a matching soot splodge, and playfully links arms with Charlie as they leave the compartment. "C'mon can't keep Hogwarts waiting."

(2.5)

Her Other Mark materialises in the summer between her third and fourth year at Hogwarts. At first, she had thought that it was just a particularly stubborn streak of hair that would simply require extra concentration to return to the stylish lilac-silver she was currently sporting.

She had pulled the hairs up, separating them from the rest of her locks, it was a small contained patch that started about an inch above her left ear. When extra concentration hadn't achieved the desired results, she went to her mother and explained.

The coo-ing that ensued was unnecessary and over the top, and Tonks wished she had just picked Weasley-Flame-Ginger for the day and dealt with it. When her mother had finally calmed enough to explain to her daughter that she had acquired the Mark-of-her-Other-Half Tonks was not quite sure how to feel.

She found it disconcerting that her perfect Other Half was already picked out and tailor-made for her. On the other hand, she enjoyed the semblance of normality that came with the Other Mark, something that alined her with every other teenager her age.

When the normal methods of masking didn't work with the constant change that came with the Metamorphing, she felt a bit less normal. Irked at this development she adapted other looks to hide her Other Mark. With some concentration, she was able to shorten the contained patch of ginger hairs so that the piece was shorn tight to her head and hidden amongst her other hair.

On her first day back at Hogwarts though, knowing no one ever questioned her ever-changing hair colour and style, she let the rest of her hair fall in line with the colour and style of her Other Mark.

3.

Tonks meets Percy when she is in her fourth year at Hogwarts.

Charlie introduces him as his little brother and Tonks politely sticks her hand out to shake. She had been told about this one - Charlie had warned that he had none of the Weasley fun in him. Percy looks at her - Aqua hair and bubblegum pink lips - and sneers.

"Oh," he says in the pitchy voice of a snooty eleven-year-old feeling newly entitled to the world of magic having just been sorted - "You're the trouble-maker" he sniffs and then walks away up a revolving staircase.

She and Charlie look at each other and almost fall over laughing.

(3.2)

In a brief period in Tonk's sixth year, she dates Charlie Weasley. He is strong and kind and chatty. And with the streak of ginger in her hair that she keeps hidden she thinks that he might be the One. But actually, deep in her bones, she knows this is not the case. They last a grand 8 months; he is good to her, they lose their virginity to each other in a clumsy fumble, and they part amicably after a blissful summer together much to the chagrin of Molly, who was all but picking china patterns out for their wedding.

4.

Tonks meets the twins when they are wreaking havoc in the Prefects bathroom that they had _somehow_ gained entrance to.

Armed with her Prefect badge, a severe and mousy haircut, and the sternest look she could muster she stands and watches as the bubbles rise higher and the twins laugh louder circling high on brooms they had acquired from god-knows-where.

She clears her throat eventually when she thinks that it has really gone far enough. They look down to see her and she notices the look that passes between them.

"Don't you dare, Weasleys." She commands. "Come down here." She was a prankster herself, she had learned that the only way to head a prank off at the pass was to pretend to know what was being planned and sound confident enough that you could stop it. Immediately. They land in front of her and she grins, waving her wand and banishing the bubbles.

"C'mon boys. You can do better than this." she says gesturing to some of the bubbles left, they look confused. "You just need better resources."

She leads them away from the prefect's bathroom and down a number of passages they don't seem to know exist - she smiles at the quiet way they marvel at the routes she has learnt after 6 years of stalking the halls. They pass Peeves and she takes a moment for some short introductions. She dreads to think what mischief they could achieve together.

Eventually, she shows the twins the way into the kitchen, instructing them to tickle the pear on the portrait. It is fulfilling to watch the wonder on their faces as the kitchen and its inhabitants open up in front of them. They spend hours into the night talking to the house-elves learning everything they possibly can about the castle and its secrets. In the early hours of the morning, she eventually manages to escort the twins away from the elves and the kitchen.

She ushers them into the corridor outside the portrait, points them in the right direction and sends the boys walking back to the Griffyndor common room.

She waits a few moments, checks the corridor, and then morphs into Snape, striding along quickly after the boys and booming down the corridor when she approaches them.

"Look what we have here then" She snarls in Snape's voice. The look on their faces is worth the long evening. She laughs so hard she snorts and starts hiccuping. She takes a second to enjoy the moment and then morphs back into herself platinum hair and all.

"Never be afraid to play the long game, boys" she warns, chuckling to herself all the way back to the Hufflepuff common room.

(4.9)

She spends considerably less time fretting over the identity of her Other than most people her age. She always keeps looking of course, but it seems rather a waste of energy to get herself worked up into a state about it. Sometimes in the dark of the evening when she is reading the latest trash novel that has topped the charts of the wizarding community she lets her Other Mark grow out and stared at the flame red of the colour.

She occasionally lets her mind wander down dangerous paths of considering her Other might be a Weasley, a member of the family that has so cared for her over the years. She would find out when the time was right.

5.

She meets Arthur Weasley (not for the first time) on her first day of Auror training.

Nervous and stormy-eyed, a newly turned 18-year-old Tonks enters the elevator to descend to the Department of Mysteries for orientation.

"Hold the door" he calls just as it's about to shut. He run-shuffles into the elevator levitating more folders and files than she thought would be possible in front of him. A cluster of flying memos zips in behind him, ducking under the arch of the door and making a sharp U-turn above their heads to face the next direction of travel.

"Ah, Nymphadora!" He exclaims and she smiles tightly at the sound of her given name.

"Call me Tonks, please" she begs.

"Right you are, Tonks." He's a good man, Arthur Weasley. He'd been kind and welcoming for the time that she was briefly a larger part of the Weasley's life, and had hoped that she would eventually become a part of the Weasley Family.

"Molly said to invite you around for dinner tonight if you aren't too busy? The kids are still at school and Charlie is away on fieldwork, so it may just be us, Bill, Percy and his new lady-friend, but of course, you are welcome. She's making cottage pie!" Arthur seems gleeful at the thought of homecooked cottage pie and it causes a flare of warmth to rise up inside Tonks.

"That sounds lovely Arthur, yes thank you I would love to join." Arthur looks supremely proud of himself.

They pass the rest of the elevator ride in companionable silence, listening to the soothing but firm voice of the announcer calling the floors as they approached them. Arthur reaches his floor first and dips his head to her as he bustles past her with the grand pile of folders and half of the inter-departmental memos flitting ahead of him.

"Have a good first day, Tonks."

Only when the doors close does Tonk realise that Arthur had alighted at the Department for International Magical Co-operation, decidedly not his department or one that he was likely to have business with. Tonks smiled at the man's kindness.

(5.2)

Her second year of Auror training is the toughest.

She had always been aware of the happy and low chatter at the back of her mind that was not hers to hear, and she had always been wary to give it it's own space. Her Other deserved some semblance of privacy.

Her second year of training is the toughest because the happy and low chatter morphs into something darker and more disturbing. It's never anything she can put her finger on exactly, and she could never tell you what exactly was said, but the melancholy and despair leak through.

She wakes up to screams in the middle of the night, sometimes human and sometimes inhuman. Her hands shake in the early hours of the mornings.

Clutching coffee in her kitchen, too afraid to succumb to sleep again, she finds her fingers tracing patterns on the surface of the wood. She knows they are letters and she knows they are probably familiar to her Other, but she doesn't look too closely. She's scared to.

6.

She is introduced to Ron in the early weeks of summer at Grimmauld Place. He's got an attitude on him big enough for all the Weasleys and a very short temper, but she senses that he means well.

She meets Hermione shortly after and she watches with amusement the way that Ron's eyes follow Hermione around the room. When Harry arrives the amusement turns to sympathy. He's such a terrified and troubled boy with the weight of the world on his shoulders. And Hermione's eyes follow Harry around the room the same way that Ron followed Hermione, though subtler in fashion.

She asks the twins whether someone had let Ron down gently yet about Hermione and Harry but they don't seem to have a clue what she is on about. She rolls her eyes but leaves the situation well alone. It is not her place to say, but perhaps she has nudged the twins enough that they might start noticing and be able to say something to their younger brother.

7.

She has heard rather a lot about the littlest Weasley, the lone girl in a brood of boys, though she had never met her. She arrives at Grimmauld Place later than the rest of the family, having spent the earlier part of the summer with the Lovegoods. Molly warns the inhabitants of the house that Ginny was vocally opposed to the relocation to Grimmauld Places so to expect a slight temper.

The girl who arrives is nothing but laughter and light-hearted teasing.

Tonks is on the first-floor landing when she arrives, and sticks her head over the bannister to see who had entered the house. The girl is pretty with brown eyes and the same flame red hair of her siblings and parents. Tonks allows herself to stand there and watch and listen and just _feel_ for a moment. The whole of Grimmauld place feels suddenly slightly louder and busier.

She looks at the girl again. She is young, far too young for anything to be right. Tonks did some quick math, she was thirteen, nearly fourteen, to Tonks' newly turned twenty-two. She shakes her head of the numbers and loud voices that cloud it.

This was her Other she was sure, more certain than she had been about anything else in her life, and it would not do to lurk and not introduce herself. She would enjoy a new friendship for the years that lay ahead of them and that was quite good enough for now.

More could come later when Ginny was older if they survived the war.

Molly called the house down for dinner so she descended the stairs carefully. She tripped only on the bottom step and found herself blushing slightly at the action in the crowded hallway.

"Ginny this is Nymphadora Tonks. Call her Tonks" Molly corrects at Her stern look to the Weasley Matriarch "And Tonks this is Ginny" Tonks wonders idly if Ginny has her Other mark yet and - ohmygod _what must that manifest like if Tonks was forever changing her appearance_ \- and she feels rather than commands her hair ripple to another colour. There was no choice in the matter. She hopes that the occupants of the hallway that were paying attention (and not single-mindedly moving towards the kitchen) thought that Tonks was gently ribbing the Weasleys when her hair fell in great flame-coloured locks.

"Wotcher Ginny"

Ginny looks up at Tonks and smiles a great smile, tucking her hair behind her ears in a nervous twitch. Then she lets out a great guffaw of laughter into the crackling quiet between them when Tonks morphs her nose into an approximation of the bill of a duck.

"Wotcher Tonks," she says, "Nice to meet you."


End file.
